Our Pal Tatiana

Kittens, when you are international blogging superstars like us, along with the fame and the millions of dollars we make every hour, there comes the occasional hassle from other bloggers. Now, we don't mind when a budding blogger contacts us and asks for some advice. After all, when we started out we did the same thing. We don't even mind when a blogger contacts us and asks us to link them. We DIDN'T do the same thing, but we don't mind it. Still, we had to decide very early on to have a fairly strict "no link exchanges" rule, simply because if we said yes to everyone who asked, we'd have a blogroll longer than both our arms put together. On the other hand, longtime friendship has its privileges and we've been meaning to tell you about our friend Tatiana for some time now.

Tatiana was a blogger before we were and in the early days of Project Rungay, we turned to her for advice and there was much discussing over bottles of wine regarding this strange medium and how to best approach it. Back in the day, she wrote a blog and column for an industry publication. Which industry and which publication? Well, we can't tell you, not that it matters anyway. Her column was a sort of working gal's version of Sex and the City, if Carrie Bradshaw was a sarcastic administrative assistant instead of an annoying adolescent. Because her columns were funny and witty and getting more and more attention every month, she was approached by a big company and, in a move that could have been straight out of Working Girl, offered a big time marketing job based solely on the wit she displayed in her work. We were thrilled for her (and insanely jealous) until the other shoe dropped.

The big-time company loved her work enough to offer her a job, but the catch was, she had to give up both her column and her blog in order to take it. Did we mention she was sarcastic and biting? Well she is. Unfortunately, her sarcasm was a bit much for Corporate America to take and, since she wrote under her own name and not a pseudonym, they didn't want her take on which of her co-workers she wanted to fuck (and which ones she wanted to kill) sullying their pristine reputation. Because nothing says "moral" like Corporate America, right? She was devastated because just as this offer came along, she was starting to get some real attention from the press. The offer was too good to pass up and, with a heavy heart, she gave up both her column and her blog for a better paycheck. She settled in to her new job and found it rewarding and fun.

Then the other, other shoe dropped. After a year and a half at her new big-time corporate job, she was laid off, like so many others are right now, and pissed because she gave up something she loved for a bigger opportunity, only to have that opportunity yanked from under her feet.

Now, when she had to give up her original blog, we returned the favor she paid us years ago by offering her our own (totally unasked-for) advice. "Start your own damn blog," we said. "That's what pseudonyms are for, right?" And thus, Tatiana's Tales was born. Because she had a more-than-full-time job, the going was slow and she couldn't put out pieces as fast as she'd have liked. Now that she finds herself among the ranks of the newly unemployed, she's recommitted herself to her first love, writing whatever the hell she wants, and has been stepping up the pace considerably.

Anyway, long story short (too late): she's funny; she's sarcastic; she's witty and she's occasionally pissed off and it all comes out in her writing. It's not easy to write a blog, no matter what the subject matter, but we have it comparatively easy because we chose pop culture and fashion to write about, which means we always have a wealth of topics. She's bolder because everything she writes about is straight from her own experiences and her own point of view. Truth be told, we're a little in awe of her for putting it all out there like that and she deserves a bigger audience. Check her out and keep checking back. She's just getting started.